"There is!" came the shout from thousands of throats, and every corner in the place echoed back the roar of it.
"Count them," said Belzebub to his confidential clerk, who had once been Chief Secretary in Ireland, and was well up in figures. The clerk began, but when he had used up all the paper in the place and all the figures he knew, he came to Belzebub and said there were still ten divisions and a battalion of lawyers to be counted.
"Shut your eyes and pick out any one at all," says Belzebub, "they're all the same. Is there a bailiff here?"
There came an immense crowd of them.
"Go," says Belzebub to one fellow, "and serve a writ on Peter."
The bailiff did as he was ordered, and when the writ reached poor St. Peter he was perturbed. He brought it to St. Patrick.
"See the mess you people have landed me in," he said, "the night you had the ceilidh—your feast night—the piece that your champion dancer knocked out of the floor fell on Belzebub's son and killed him." The Gaels weren't the least bit sorry. The only comment was made by Conan Maol.
"Pity it wasn't on the father it fell," says he.
"O dear, O dear," says St. Peter, with a sigh, and off he went to look for legal advice.
Everybody noticed that for the next few days he was terribly troubled, that he was searching for something or somebody, high up and low down, going here, there and everywhere.